Every year, NBA teams combined draw in billions of dollars in revenues, as the high action game supports a large fan base. Basketball is the second most watched sport in the U.S, and is widely considered to be the most played sport (Petrova, 2022). Growing up in Milwaukee, WI I have always been a fan of of Wisconsin sport teams, particularly the Milwaukee Bucks. For this project I wanted to analyze the impact of one of the top players in the league, Giannis Antetokounmpo, on the Bucks organization. To do this I am going to first look at general trends in both player and team game statistics. Next I will compare Giannis to other members of the Bucks starting lineups over the years, as well as with other top NBA players. Finally, I am going to show the greater impact on the organization through data points such as team game day stats and the valuation of the Bucks organization as a whole.

Giannis was drafted to the Bucks in July of 2013 as the 15th overall draft pick at 18 years old. While he had minutes in almost every game in the 2013-14 season, he did not become a core member of the starting lineup until the 2014-15 season. Since being a core member of the starting lineup, the Bucks have made it to at least the first round of the playoffs every single year (except 2016-17). Additionally, Giannis led the Bucks to an NBA championship in 2021 (2020-21 season), which was only the second title in program history (the first one being in 1971, 50 years before).

Giannis vs Other Players

This graph shows the average minutes played per games against number of games played in a season for every member of the Bucks starting lineup from the 1997-98 season to the 2021-22 season. Starting lineup players for each season were determined by the combination of 5 players that started the most games together over the course of said season. The viewer is also able to get the player name, year, and specific x and y values that correspond to each data point by hovering over the desired point. Looking at this graph it is clear that Giannis (green) is is in the top right quadrant of the graph, meaning he consistently plays in most games in a season, while also playing a lot of minutes per game. For every year he was in the starting lineup, Giannis played in greater then 3/4 of the total games per season (82 games –> 3/4 = 61.5). In 2020 Giannis only played 61 games, however the regular season was cut short to only 72 games due to Covid-19.

This graph compares the average number of points per game scored by Giannis with the minimum points per game needed to be in the top 5 of all NBA players for a given season. By just his 4th season on the Bucks starting lineup (and 5th season in the NBA) Giannis was averaging enough points per game to be in the top 5 of all NBA players. Furthermore, he has been in the top 5 for every season since, showing his consistent dominance on the court.

Impact on Bucks

This graph focuses specifically at the average points per game for the Bucks from the 1991-98 season to the 2022-23 season, colored by whether or not the Bucks made the playoffs that season. The vertical dashed line is at the year 2014, which is the year that Giannis became part of the Bucks starting lineup. From this graph you can clearly see there was a huge increase in average points per game from 2014 to 2022. Some of this can likely be attributed to the trend that we observed in the second graph, which suggested that points per game per team have generally increased over the years as playing style has become more offensively focused. However, despite this general change in the trends from the second graph we were also able to tell that in the later seasons the Bucks were at the top of the teams based on points per game. We can see in the graph above that 2018 is the year that the Bucks points really skyrocketed, which is the year after Giannis started scoring in the top 5 of all players. This allows us to make the connection that Giannis’s dominant playing style is part of the reason that the Bucks started to be at the top end of all teams in terms of scoring. Additionally, based on the coloring of the graph you can see that the Bucks made the playoffs every single year with Giannis on the starting lineup except for one, and before Giannis they made playoffs 8 out of 17 times from 1997 - 2013.

This graph shows the percentage of games won each regular playing season by the Bucks, and is colored by whether or not Giannis was a part of the starting lineup for a given season. The total number of games per season is 82, except for in 2020 when the regular season was cut short due to Covid-19 and there were only 72 regular season games played, and in the 1998 season only 50 games were played due to the NBA lockout caused by labor issues. This graph shows hows from 1997 to 2022 the win percentage started out relatively high, then decreased in the middle years (with a couple peaks still), and then started to follow a generally increased trend (with a few exceptions) when Giannis became a part of the starting lineup. Furthermore, from this graph you can see that the Bucks achieved their highest win percentages when Giannis was a part of the core starting lineup, once again highlighting his importance to the team.

This graph shows the annual attendance per season for home games for the Bucks from 1997 - 2022. The red dashed line once again indicated the 2014-15 season when Giannis entered the starting lineup for the Bucks, and the black dashed line indicates the season 2013-14 season when Giannis played his first season with the Bucks (though was not a member of the starting lineup). Looking at this graph it is clear that the Bucks home game attendance rates were strictly increasing from when Giannis was drafted to the team (disregarding the 2020 season data as values were impacted by Covid-19). While this graph does not show a drastic change in attendance over the seasons, the fact that there was a general decreasing trend starting from the peak in 2003 until 2013 when an increasing trend is observed shows that the Bucks gained more fan interest after Giannis was drafted, and that interest has continued to grow every year he is a part of the team. Furthermore, in 2016 the Bucks started construction on a new stadium (first used during the 2018-19), which is something they would not have been able to do (or had much of a reason to do) if it weren’t for Giannis and the interest and support he generated for the team.

This shiny app ties together the overall impact of Giannis on the Bucks organization by showing the changes in valuation, operating income, revenue, and win-to-player-cost ratio from the year Giannis entered the starting lineup (2014-15 season) to the end of the most previous complete season (2022-23). In the app the user is able to select which of the four variables they want to observe, and the change is shown through the use of a bar plot, with each bar representing one season. With this visualization you can see how all variables demonstrate a clear increase from 2014 to 2022. An interesting observation that can be seen in the bar charts is the impact that Covid-19 had. In terms of team valuation there is a stagnation in the growth observed from 2019-2020. The revenue has a little dip for the 2020 and 2021 seasons, which makes since as the effects of Covid were likely still in play due to hesitation of being around large groups of people. The operating income had a large peak in 2019 which then dipped down during the prime Covid years, however made a large comeback in 2022.

Overall this app really shows the impact that Giannis has had on the Bucks organization. From just 2014 to 2022 the team valuation almost quadrupled, from 600 million to 2.3 billion. Looking at all of the graphs in the project it is easy to tell that Giannis is a dominant player on the court, helping the Bucks climb the ranks of the NBA teams, to a point where they are now considered one of the top teams in the league. He also proved to have so much potential after just a few years that the team was able to build a whole new stadium that had not been in the plans before Giannis was a part of the team. Additionally, Giannis helped bring home the second ever NBA championship to the Bucks, which occurred 50 years after their first championship win.